All posts tagged Bi Feiyu

Whenever I commit to judging a literary prize, as boxes of books stack up in the hallway, one hope is to make a momentous personal discovery. That wish was instantly fulfilled for me as chair of the jury for this year’s Man Asian Literary Prize with one of the first novels I read, “Goat Days” by Benyamin, a harrowing yet luminously redemptive tale based on a true story of a diver from Kerala, India, enslaved as a goat herd in the Saudi desert.

Pan-Asian and multilingual in scope, though channeled for practical reasons through English translation, the prize, now in its sixth year, has been replicating that exhilarating shock of discovery for readers around the world.

Yet it really is not just about winning. “Goat Days” made it to this year’s longlist of 15 titles, and no further, indicating the strength of competition.

“When I was on the shortlist,” Mr. Bi said last night when he accepted the award, “my friends and the media in China were all saying, ‘Impossible, there’s no way a Chinese writer can get a third one,’” he said, referring to the fact that two of the previous three winners of the Man Asian Literary Prize — Jiang Rong (for “Wolf Totem”) and Su Tong (“The Boat to Redemption”) — were also Chinese. “They said, ‘Don’t even bother going to Hong Kong.’ But I had to come because…I had to show my son that if I did not win, I would still stand there and take it like a man.” Read More »